Bulgarian town gives a stage to local home winemakers

Asenovgrad is looking for the 'best homemade wine' with grapes from 2022

With the end of the Christmas holidays, the regular soggy season is setting over Europe. However, one obscure Bulgarian town offers perfect solace for the long and dark winter days.

Last week, local authorities in Asenovgrad announced a competition for the best homemade wine of the 2022 harvest. The city plans to use the occasion to celebrate Trifon Zarezan, a traditional Bulgarian holiday all about viticulture marked both on 1 or 14 February.

The mix-up with the dates is very peculiar, but it stems from the fact that the church celebrates the day on 1 February, while the folk tradition of Trifon Zarezan is celebrated on the 14th. More religious celebrations are linked to the date in the Gregorian Calendar. It was adopted by Bulgaria in 1916, before that the country used the Julian calendar and both have a 14-day gap. 

The winners of the wine contest 

The contest will accept entries from red wines, white wines and rose wines from the region. There will be a separate award for producers outside the municipality and another for the best Mavrud whine.

The winners will get to split a near 1000-euro prize pool and two 50-litre wooden barrels for maturing wine. The highest prizes are for first place red wine - 150 euros and a barrel - and non-local wine - 100 euros and a barrel.

How to participate?

Here are a few requirements the amateur winemakers have to meet: The wines need to be clear and given to the jury in wine bottles. Producers can only enter their own wines and they cannot use cultivar or hybrid grape varieties. At the same time, producers need to list the types of grapes they have used to produce the wine.

Winemakers need to have at least 30 bottles available from every wine they submit in the contest. They need to register at the Asenovgrad municipal building, where they will leave three bottles to be tested and sampled.   

The best wine will be determined by a wine-tasting jury featuring the National Institute for Research and Control of Wines and Spirits in Sofia, the University for Food Technology in Plovdiv, the Executive Agency on Vine and Wine (EAVW) and Vinzavod – Asenovgrad, a local winemaking factory.